Despite registering 29 scoring chance and 16 high-danger shot attempts throughout the game, the Panthers were unable to get much of anything past Andrei Vasilevskiy in Tampa Bay's net.
"Everyone knows he's one of the best goalies in the world," Panthers captain Aleksander Barkov said of Vasilevskiy, who went 9-for-9 on high-danger shots against, per NaturalStatTrick.com. "There's a reason he's won a few Cups. Just keep going. We know we're going to find a way at some point."
Even thought it was the Panthers that came out flying, the Lightning managed to break the ice when Pat Maroon took a pass from Athony Cirelli and roofed a shot over Sergei Bobrovsky from the right circle to make it a 1-0 game at 8:40 of the first period.
Finding the back of the net for the second time in three games since being called up from the AHL, Zac Dalpe pulled the Panthers even when his sharp-angle shot from the right side of the net went off a defender and past Vasilevskiy to make it 1-0 at 6:02 of the second period.
Putting Tampa Bay back on top, Brayden Point, who has produced at better than a point-per-game clip in his career against Florida, skated down toward the right side of the net and just managed to beat Bobrovsky with a short-side shot to make it 2-1 at 3:03 of the third period.
Adding another goal less than five minutes later, Mikhail Sergachev scored to make it 3-1 at 7:22. The Panthers challenged the goal for goaltender interference, but the call was upheld by officials after they deemed that Aaron Ekblad had initiated the contact that led to the interference.
"I think they got that one goal and all of the sudden it changes everything," Barkov said. "It's no longer a tie game and we're kind of behind and maybe we started forcing a little more and opened up a bit. That was kind of a tough goal to let in, the third one.
"You have no idea what's going on there and they get a goal like that, and then you keep forcing things. I think the first two periods, even though they had more shots to the net, I think we kept our game tight. Bob was really good and helped us a lot. We had our chances."
With the Panthers having to take some risks in an attempt to get back into the game late, Steven Stamkos shut down any would-be comeback attempt when he scored on an odd-man rush to extend both his point streak to 13 games and Tampa Bay's lead to 4-1 with just 3:15 remaining on the clock in regulation.
Bobrovsky finished with 34 saves, while Vasilevskiy stopped 24 of 25 shots.
"We're learning and we're building our game," Barkov said. "At some point we need to put wins together, but we have a good chance tomorrow [against the Seattle Kraken]. We don't want to stick on this for too long. We'll take the good things from this and move forward."
